Given the bleak outlook, it's a relief to see growing
momentum for raising the minimum wage to livable levels.
Treasury Secretary
Jack Lew comes across as somewhat optimistic about the rather lackluster
national economy.
“Evidence continues to
mount that our economy is gaining traction,” Lew recently
said.
“Nevertheless, we cannot escape the fact that millions of
Americans continue to struggle and their pain reminds us that our work is not
finished…For too many families this hardly feels like a recovery.”
At least he’s being
honest.
But median household
income, adjusted for inflation, is parked at
$51,000 a year. That’s more than $4,000 below where
it stood when the recession began in 2007 and has actually declined a bit since
1989.
It’s hard to see what
might appear to be progress as anything other than a good news-bad news
situation. Joblessness is down because new jobs are being created, but lots of new jobs
are crummy. They don’t pay enough to support a small family.
And unemployment
declined in part because so many of the formerly employed have given up looking
and settled for part-time and otherwise sub-par gigs that don’t make the full
use of their potential. Many of these folks are no longer in the workforce at
all.
Families that got by
well enough on two meager incomes have now settled for living poorly on one.
Many stay-at-home
moms and dads alike say
circumstances, rather than choice, dictated their current lifestyle.
We live in a
hamster-wheel economy: No matter how fast it spins or how hard workers toil,
it’s not moving ahead. What’s the best way out of the economic malaise that
results from chronic under-employment, persistent joblessness, and household
income levels that date back before many American workers were even born?
Well, we could try
what the French do: work less.
The French way of work
includes a shorter week with fewer hours and long vacations. In other words
they address the shortage of jobs by spreading the work around. People earn a
more-or-less living wage for doing less than their American counterparts. It
sounds awfully nice but it’s no cure-all.
French unemployment is
pretty high and wages are stagnating there too.
Still, the Affordable
Care Act is giving more Americans the opportunity to be more like the French by
working less and even opting out of
the workforce altogether. The landmark health care law lets
some overburdened citizens give up their day jobs. That’s bringing relief to
many caregivers with seriously ill loved ones who previously struggled to keep
working simply to hang onto their health insurance. Time matters more than
money to these folks right now.
Given the federal
government’s failure to bring on an authentic economic recovery, the growing
momentum in states and cities for raising the minimum wage to livable levels is
injecting some light into the end of the tunnel. Seattle just raised its base
pay to $15 an hour.
Connecticut made
history a few months ago by becoming the first state to
establish a $10.10 hourly minimum wage. D.C.’s leaders, who approved a gradual
increase that will hit $11.50 an hour
by 2016, are now under pressure to aim higher than that.
What could the federal
government do, aside from raising the minimum wage for everyone? One option
would be to study how our country recovered from the Great Depression:
undertaking big projects. Everybody got a dam, or at least a high school, or a
mural. The government’s industrial mobilization during WWII brought
unemployment down to
negligible levels.
Of course the federal
government isn’t on the verge of doing anything that bold. And with a tea party
unknown triggering House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s unexpected exit,
Congress may move from gridlock to frozen in place.
Emily
Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords,
a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy
Studies @ESGreco. OtherWords columnist William A.
Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk,
Connecticut. OtherWords.org